Poem for October: The Raven


UNCLE! I cry UNCLE. I give up on this most delightful poem. A few things went wrong here. First off, it was too long to memorize over two months. I think my original assignment had me committing two to three stanzas per week to memory. That just wasn’t possible, for on the best weeks I could get maybe a stanza into my brain. The second problem was the darn “archaic language” problem. I will most likely never in my life say the sentence “Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore.” It’s a great sentence. I love “dirge,” “melancholy,” and the alliteration of “burden bore,” but so much “old fashioned” in one sentence just doesn’t stick in my head.

This was an incredibly fun poem to memorize, full of fabulous alliteration, great turns of phrase and much drama. Rather than recite it in the boring “poetry recitation voice” you can actually act it out. But I just can’t get it all in. I had thought of extending my memorization period into November, but I seem to be falling behind again and again and my frustration has grown, mirroring like the main character’s journey with the Raven. So I’m letting this one go and learning a good lesson about biting off and chewing. For the record, I made it through 12 stanzas.
My favorite lines? “And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain/Thrilled me–filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before.”
I also loved the stanza that begins “Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing.”
I’ll look into a shorter Poe poem. His rhyme scheme is great and world choice is delightful. In the meantime, enjoy this as I did. Try reading it aloud.
The Raven
Edgar Allan Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`’Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door –
Only this, and nothing more.’
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; – vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow – sorrow for the lost Lenore –
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore –
Nameless here for evermore.
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me – filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door –
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; –
This it is, and nothing more,’
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,’ said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you’ – here I opened wide the door; –
Darkness there, and nothing more.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!’
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!’
Merely this and nothing more.
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
`Surely,’ said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore –
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; –
‘Tis the wind and nothing more!’
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door –
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door –
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,’ I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore –
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!’
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning – little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door –
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as `Nevermore.’
But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered – not a feather then he fluttered –
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before –
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.’
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.’
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
`Doubtless,’ said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore –
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of “Never-nevermore.”‘
But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore –
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking `Nevermore.’
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
`Wretch,’ I cried, `thy God hath lent thee – by these angels he has sent thee
Respite – respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!’
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’
`Prophet!’ said I, `thing of evil! – prophet still, if bird or devil! –
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted –
On this home by horror haunted – tell me truly, I implore –
Is there – is there balm in Gilead? – tell me – tell me, I implore!’
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’
`Prophet!’ said I, `thing of evil! – prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us – by that God we both adore –
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore –
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?’
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’
`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!’ I shrieked upstarting –
`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! – quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!’
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted – nevermore!

Books read in October

Oh dear, 12 books read this month. With the Mock Printz, the read aloud that Matt and I are doing and the generally cold and dreary weather I have failed at my goal of reading no more than 75 books this year. Geez.

Read
Order of the Stick War & XP
Rich Berlew
Matt and I Read Aloud
Berlew leaves our Order in grave–literally, in one case–disorder by the end of this very thick book of comics.
Richard III
William Shakespeare
There are too many people! They all have the same name! I have no idea what’s going on! Richard III spends a lot of time telling people how bad he is! But he really is!
As usual, much better when the actors bring it to life.
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate
Jacqueline Kelly
Recommended by my friend Kristen, I liked this book for a variety of reasons. It was set in 1899, rural Texas, but the main character’s family was quite well off. I feel like a lot of books set in the frontier west focus on the poor and struggling, so this was a nice change of pace. The main character was quite engaging, being the middle child with three brothers on either side. The struggles she had maturing into a new life stage were engaging, and her family was well formed for such a large bunch. Also, the writing was very good, especially for a YA novel. And it was funny in places, which always makes reading enjoyable. This would be a great book for someone who has never read–but is interested in–YA fiction.
One Day
David Nichols
Matt and I read aloud
This was a fabulous read-aloud book because the writing is quite good, the passages through life are very apt and the dialogue is a pleasure to speak. It is an even better read-aloud with your opposite sex significant other, because one of you can do the female parts and the other do the male parts. (I’m sure same sex couples would also have fun too.) Now that I’ve seen the movie I can heartily entreat you to bypass it altogether and just read the darn book.
13 Little Blue Envelopes
Maureen Johnson
I’ve been submerged in Shakespeaere, and the long slow and–frankly–very boring book One Hundred Years of Solitude for nearly a month. I’ve just received the Mock Printz list and noticed it contains 10 books all of which look to be rather tense and/or grim. There is going to be a lot of buckling down reading in the next few months. What to do? Realize that I haven’t yet read anything by Maureen Johnson, wander over to the YA stacks and grab the first book I see by her. Then: devour it in a 24 hour period.
I’ve been meaning to check out Maureen Johnson since I began watching the Vlog Brothers, and I found her just as delightful as John Green was telling me she would be. This book had a great premise: Flighty Aunt sends niece a letter and money and tells her to follow the directions of that letter and the 12 following. It was fun and funny and had a plot twist I didn’t anticipate. After clearing my head with this bit of delight I could plow through the last 40 pages of Marquez’ tome. Maureen Johnson was just what the doctor (or perhaps Youth Librarian) ordered.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Read for Kenton Book Club
The nice thing about book club is that I’m forced to think more deeply about why I don’t like books. In the normal order of things, I would have set this book down, bored and frustrated around page 50 and it would have been returned to the library eventually. Because we were discussing it for book group, I wanted to finish it, even though I didn’t like it. First off, finishing it for book group sometimes pays off as with Inez of my Soul where there was a twist at the end that (mostly) made the book worth reading. This book, alas, had no such thing. But as it was such a long book (417 pages) I spent a very long time analyzing what I didn’t like. And here is my list.
1) I think when this was written there wasn’t really magical realism in literature and so it was this new crazy thing that everyone was quite astounded by. However, now that magical realism is everywhere, this book is just a so-so entry.
2)I was not a fan of the very fluid timeline. Several times I found myself wondering how old a character was, which took me out of the book.
3)The characters having the same names? Very confusing. And not in a good way.
4)The writing style (or translation) was not something that drew me in. I found it very flat.
5)I didn’t really like any of the characters. And spending 417 pages with a bunch of people with the same name that you don’t really like is not very fun.
6)I did, however, perfect the talent of falling asleep while balancing the book on my chest while reading this book.
Interestingly, the book club members didn’t really like it either. Reactions ranged from “Well, I’m glad I have read it, though I didn’t enjoy the reading” to “I absolutely loved this 25 years ago and spent this rereading wondering what I liked so much” to “I could have done with 50 years of solitude, but one hundred years was a bit much.”
Despite our dislike, our discussion was rich and interesting.
The Order of the Stick: Start of Darkness
Rich Berlew
The book that we learn that Xykon is pure evil while Red Cloak is not actually evil, but has instead made a series of increasingly bad decisions.
(In our house this emerged as: “You know, I think Red Cloak is the George W. Bush, but Xykon is the Dick Cheney of the Order of the Stick World.”)
Anne of Windy Poplars
L.M. Montgomery
I sort of get the feeling, reading this book, that L.M. Montgomery was often trapped in rooms with eccentric women who nattered on. I get this feeling mostly because Anne keeps getting trapped in rooms with eccentric women nattering on. Character development was nil here. Anne encounters different people over three years and manages to happily change all of their lives. Except that eight year old boy the author killed off so that another character could have a happy ending. She writes letters to Gilbert narrating her life, but we never hear anything from him. This lack of development of the main character’s fiance seems like a rather large oversight. As their relationship has gotten more serious, we have heard less and less from him. And characters from the previous book are completely missing. What’s up with Priscilla? How is she adjusting to being a minister’s wife? I realize they live in different places now, but couldn’t she even write?
I still enjoyed reading this, but I think Montgomery is coasting a bit. Also, the cover of the edition I read annoyed me. Here is Anne, a B.A. and principal of the school and they’ve got her walking around in dresses the length she would have worn as a fourteen year old. Where is her mature woman dress? Where?
Chime
Franny Billingsley
Read for Mock Printz
I sort of didn’t like this book from the beginning and now I’ve read it to the end and can clearly state that I don’t feel it was a good book. Let us examine the ways.
Setting. This book was ostensibly set in early 20th century small English village, though none of the characters struck me as anything other than modern in their thoughts, actions or deeds. If one of them would have pulled out a cell phone and started texting, I don’t think it would have registered as something out of the ordinary. Also, there is a magical realism element to this novel, but it felt forced, as if everyone was trying very hard to talk about the witches, etc. but the effect was neither magical nor real to me.
Writing. The cover tells me it is a “beautifully written” book, but I found the style quite grating. The repetitive sentences were, I believe, supposed to give me insight into the tormented mind of the main character, but instead inspired a lot of tormentation of my mind. Perhaps the overwroght-ness would appeal better to a teenager. Also, I found the names of the magical elements rather immature in nature: Mucky Hand, Boggy Man. Grownups went around saying those names and I think grownups would not want to be uttering toddler-type names for long.
Characters. I got pretty clear pictures of the main ones, but things were a bit hazy with the narrative and everyone else sort of faded into the background.
Narrative. By the time the plot had wrapped itself up, nothing was a surprise to me, because so much of it had been hinted at before.
Blink & Caution
Tim Wynn-Jones
Read for Mock Printz
When I received the list of ten books to read for the Mock Printz discussion, I groaned. A cursory check revealed them to all be grim/tense. I’m a fan of grim/tense, though not for 10 books in a row. After wading through Chime, I got ready to force myself through this book. Happily, I was reminded that not all the books we read are bad.
This one fell into the “tense” category, but it was tense in a way that made me cast off my other reading and just rip through the book. The characters were great, incredibly likable, not perfect and street smart. I loved that it was set in Canada (authors live in Canada too? I had no idea!) and encompassed both city and country. This would be a great read for a reluctant boy reader and girls will like it too. There is mention of sex/amateur porn in the beginning, but it’s alluded too and not graphic. Overall, a very good read and so far my favorite of the Mock Printz books I’ve read.
King John
Wm. Shakespeare
If you could sort my Goodreads Shakespeare reviews and read them all at once you would find they all say the same thing: Bor-ing! Boring, boring, boring! This one too. However, it does help to read them before we see the play as I discovered when we abruptly moved our tickets up a week and I hadn’t read the fifth act. My mind wandered a lot more during that act then the others because I didn’t know what was coming. So I will keep reading these boring plays before seeing them brought to life by actors who know what they are doing.
The Berlin Boxing Club
Robert Sharenow
Read for Mock Printz
In my normal reading life, I’ve been avoiding books about the Holocaust. I know that this period in world history provides a lot of drama and pathos and many themes to explore, but I’m tired of reading about it. So I avoid. But my Mock Printz booklist is apparently not aware of my “No Nazis” rule and so I read this book set in 1930’s Berlin. I remarked earlier that my list of ten Mock Printz books are all either tense or depressing. This falls into the depressing category, with a bit of tension thrown in. Despite these marks against it, I liked the book. It was well written and I felt the plot brought to life the decreasing freedoms the Jewish people of Germany experienced in the 1930s. I’ve read about it in the history books, of course, but the main character’s experience made it much more real. It was especially interesting to see the difference for the main character, who did not look Jewish and found it much easier to move about the streets, with his sister, who looked very Jewish and experienced much more harassment.
The boxing sections were interesting too. I was particularly taken with the idea of “the 300.” That would be 100 push ups, 100 sit ups, 50 pull ups and 50 minutes of running. In the book, Max Schmelling proscribed that daily fitness routine for aspiring boxers. Inspired, I attempted a 300 of my own, and like the main character’s experience, my first 300 lackluster, clocking in only at was 51.
I felt that there could have been more illustrations and–contrary to my usual feelings–I would have liked some sort of epilogue. But this was a good read and I finished it ahead of schedule which I take to be a good sign. This is another “good for boys” book. If they are Jewish or into boxing I suspect they would like it that much more.
Started but did not finish.
The Way
Kristen Wolf
This was a promising book. A friend recommended it most forcefully. I started it, but got bogged down in other books that come with deadlines to finish so this went back to the library. Another time.

“Just one thing” mission accomplished again.

We (meaning Matt drove) took everything to Goodwill! It was such a relief. A lot of that stuff has been sitting on the shelf by the front door for more than a year, waiting to go to Goodwill. The shelf has been completely cleared off and I put it out on the parking strip as “free stuff.” It was gone before we came home from the gym. So now I have a clear area by my door. The plan now is that we will keep anything that needs to go to Goodwill in a bag in our room, and the door will stay clear of debris. This feels much better. As a lot of the Goodwill stuff was stacked in the storage shed, it also allowed me to clear that space and move the potatoes out to the storage shed instead of having them stacked along the wall in my room. So two areas in the house are clear.

Also! I asked, and Goodwill took the broken printer and broken toaster. I thought we would have to make a separate trip to the recycling center, but they took everything! Hurrah!

Just one thing mission one completed

I envisioned “just one thing” as running Sunday through Saturday, but Saturday came and went and I still hadn’t gotten the dryer vent tube. But I figure that I posted the original post on a Monday, so a task completed on Sunday still falls within the “week” qualifications. And on Sunday I completed my task. Dryer vent hose was bought, installed and the old one made its way to the trash can.

My “just one thing” task for this week: Goodwill run. I’ve got a ton of stuff to go.

The debut of “Just one thing”

The house has been overwhelming me lately. I’m finding it hard to keep a basic level of “clean” much less all the little niggly things: the fan in the bathroom needs a scrubbing, there’s that cobweb still hanging in the middle of the living room, the vacuum cleaner needs to get serviced, etc. etc.

So each week, I’m going to do just one thing per week. Ideally it will be on top of the weekly cleaning of the house, but if I don’t get to cleaning the house, I don’t. Matt tends to chip away at the cleaning each weekend anyway, even if he doesn’t get all the way through the official list. I’ll post my “one thing” on Sunday and update when I have done it. I will not make a list of five “one things,” I will just do one thing. Because right now nothing is getting done. And if I can do four things in a month, that will be a great improvement.
My “one thing” this week? Buy a new dryer exhaust tube. Ours broke (well actually, I was cleaning the lint out of it and accidentally stuck my finger through it making a lovely hole which I temporarily fixed with packing tape topped with duct tape*) and there is a lot of dryer use in the house. I can see how the temporary fix could go on for months. But it won’t. Because this is my one thing.
*and yes, I know that you shouldn’t use duct tape for ducts anymore. It was just what we had on hand.

Three sentence movie reviews: Attack the Block


This was a very fun movie which probably would have been even funnier if it had been subtitled as a lot of the British English mixed with the British slang flew past my ear. I loved the low production values, the characters were funny and sympathetic and the plot was interesting. Highly recommended, for people with the right frame of mind.